Interruption, and hey, how about giving old Morgenstern credit for a major league fake-out there. I mean, didn’t you think for a while at least that they really were married? I did.
It’s one of my biggest memories of my father reading. I had pneumonia, remember, but I was a little better now, and madly caught up in the book, and one thing you know when you’re ten is that, no matter what, there’s gonna be a happy ending. They can sweat all they want to scare you, the authors, but back of it all you know, you justhave no doubt, that in the long run justice is going to win out. And Westley and Buttercup—well, they had their troubles, sure, but they were going to get married and live happily ever after. I would have bet the family fortune if I’d found a sucker big enough to take me on.
Well, when my father got through with that sentence where the wedding was sandwiched between the ministers’ meeting and the treasury whatever, I said, ‘You read that wrong.’
My father’s this little bald barber—remember that too? And kind of illiterate. Well, you just don’t challenge a guy who has trouble reading and say he’s read something incorrectly, because that’s really threatening. ‘I’m doing the reading,’ he said.
I know that but you got it wrong. She didn’t marry that rotten Humperdinck. She marries Westley.’
‘It says right here,’ my father began, a little huffy, and he starts going over it again.
“You must have skipped a page then. Something. Get it right, huh?’
By now he was more than a tiny bit upset. I skipped nothing. I read the words. The words are there, I read them, good night,’ and off he went.
‘Hey please, no,’ I called after him, but he’s stubborn, and, next thing, my mother was in saying, ‘Your father says his throat is too sore; I told him not to read so much,’ and she tucked and fluffed me and no matter how I battled, it was over. No more story till the next day.
I spent that whole night thinking Buttercup married Humperdinck. It just rocked me. How can I explain it, but the world didn’t work that way. Good got attracted to good, evil you flushed down the John and that was that. But their marriage—I couldn’t make it jibe. God, did I work at it. First I thought that probably Buttercup had this fantastic effect on Humperdinck and turned him into a kind of Westley, or maybe Westley and Humperdinck turned out to be long-lost brothers and Humperdinck was so happy to get his brother back he said, “Look, Westley, I didn’t realize who you were when I married her so what I’ll do is I’ll divorce her and you marry her and that way we’ll all be happy.’ To this day I don’t think I was ever more creative.
But it didn’t take. Something was wrong and I couldn’t lose it. Suddenly there was this discontent gnawing away until it had a place big enough to settle in and then it curled up and stayed there and it’s still inside me lurking as I write this now.
The next night, when my father went back to reading and the marriage turned out to have been Buttercup’s dream, I screamed I knew it, all along I knew it,’ and my father said, ‘So you’re happy now, it’s all right now, we can please continue?’ and I said ‘Go’ and he did.
But I wasn’t happy. Oh my ears were happy, I guess, my story sense was happy, my heart too, but in my, I suppose you have to call it ‘soul,’ there was that damn discontent, shaking its dark head.
All this was never explained to me till I was in my teens and there was this great woman who lived in my home town, Edith Neisser, dead now, and she wrote terrific books about how we screw up our children—Brothers and Sisters was one of her books, The Eldest Child was another. Published by Harper. Edith doesn’t need the plug, seeing, like I said, as she’s no longer with us, but if there are any amongst you who are worried that maybe you’re not being perfect parents, pick up one of Edith’s books while there’s still time. I knew her ‘cause her kid Ed got his haircuts from my pop, and she was this writer and by my teens I knew, secretly, that was the life for me too, except I couldn’t tell anybody. It was too embarrassing—barber’s sons, if they hustled, maybe got to be IBM salesmen, but writers? No way. Don’t ask me how, but eventually Edith discovered my shhhhhh ambition and from then on, sometimes, we would talk. And I remember once we were having iced tea on the Neisser porch and talking and just outside the porch was their badminton court and I was watching some kids play badminton and Ed had just shellacked me, and as I left the court for the porch, he said, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll all work out, you’ll get me next time’ and I nodded, and then Ed said, ‘And if you don’t, you’ll beat me at something else.’
I went to the porch and sipped iced tea and Edith was reading this book and she didn’t put it down when she said, ‘That’s not necessarily true, you know,’
I said, ‘How do you mean?’
And that’s when she put her book down. And looked at me. And said it: ‘Life isn’t fair, Bill. We tell our children that it is, but it’s a terrible thing to do. It’s not only a lie, it’s a cruel lie. Life is not fair, and it never has been, and it’s never going to be.’
Would you believe that for me right then it was like one of those comic books where the light bulb goes on over Mandrake the Magician’s head?’It isn’t!’Isaid, so loud I realty startled her. ‘You’re right. It’s not fair.’ I was so happy if I’d known how to dance, I’d have started dancing. ‘Isn’t that great, isn’t it just terrific?’ I think along about here Edith must have thought I was well on my way toward being bonkers.
But it meant so much to me to have it said and out and free and flying—that was the discontent I endured the night my father stopped reading, I realized right then. That was the reconciliation I was trying to make and couldn’t.
And that’s what I think this book’s about. All those Columbia experts can spiel all they want about the delicious satire; they’re crazy. This book says ‘life isn’t fair’ and I’m telling you, one and all, you better believe it. I got a fat spoiled son—he’s not gonna nab Miss Rheingold. And he’s always gonna be fat, even if he gets skinny he’ll still be fat and he’ll still be spoiled and life will never be enough to make him happy, and that’s my fault maybe—make it all my fault, if you want—the point is, we’re not created equal, for the rich they sing, life isn’t fair. I got a cold wife; she’s brilliant, she’s stimulating, she’s terrific; there’s no love; that’s okay too, just so long as we don’t keep expecting everything to somehow even out for us before we die.
Look. (Grownups skip this paragraph.) I’m not about to tell you this book has a tragic ending, I already said in the very first line how it was my favorite in all the world. But there’s a lot of bad stuff coming up, torture you’ve already been prepared for, but there’s worse. There’s death coming up, and you better understand this:some of the wrong people die.Be ready for it. This isn’t Curious George Uses the Potty. Nobody warned me and it was my own fault (you’ll see what I mean in a little) and that was my mistake, so I’m not letting it happen to you. The wrong people die, some of them, and the reason is this: life is not fair. Forget all the garbage your parents put out. Remember Morgenstern. You’ll be a lot happier.
Okay. Enough. Back to the text. Nightmare time.
The next night she dreamed of giving birth to their first child and it was a girl, a beautiful little girl, and Buttercup said, “I’m sorry it wasn’t a boy; I know you need an heir,” and Humperdinck said, “Beloved sweet, don’t concern yourself with that; just look at the glorious child God has given us” and then he left and Buttercup held the child to her perfect breast and the child said, “Your milk is sour” and Buttercup said, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and she shifted the infant to the other breast and the child said, “No, this is sour too,” and Buttercup said, “I don’t know what to do” and the baby said, “You always know what to do, you always know exactly what to do, you always do exactly what’s right for you, and the rest of the world can go hang,” and Buttercup said, “You mean Westley” and the baby said, “Of course I mean Westley,” and Buttercup explained patiently, “I thought he was dead, you see; I’d given my word to your father” and the baby said, “I’m dying now; there’s no love in your milk, your milk has killed me” and then the child stiffened and cracked and turned in Buttercup’s hands to nothing but dry dust and Buttercup screamed and screamed; even when she was awake again, with fifty-nine days to go till her marriage, she was still screaming.
The third nightmare came quickly the following evening, and again it was a baby—this time a son, a marvelous strong boy—and Humperdinck said, “Beloved, it’s a boy” and Buttercup said, “I didn’t fail you, thank heavens” and then he was gone and Buttercup called out, “May I see my son now” and all the doctors scurried around outside her royal room, but the boy was not brought in. “What seems to be the trouble?” Buttercup called out and the chief doctor said, “I don’t quite understand, but he doesn’t want to see you” and Buttercup said, “Tell him I am his mother and I am the Queen and I command his presence” and then he was there, just as handsome a baby boy as anyone could wish for. “Close it,” Buttercup said, and the doctors closed the door. The baby stood in the corner as far from her bed as he could. “Come here, darling,” Buttercup said. “Why? Are you going to kill me too?” “I’m your mother and I love you, now come here; I’ve never killed anybody.” “You killed Westley, did you see his face in the Fire Swamp? When you walked away and left him? That’s what I call killing.” “When you’re older, you’ll understand things, now I’m not going to tell you again—come here.” “Murderer,” the baby shouted.”Murderer!” but by then she was out of bed and she had him in her arms and was saying, “Stop that, stop it this instant; I love you,” and he said, “Your love is poison; it kills,” and he died in her arms and she started to cry. Even when she was awake again, with fifty-eight days to go till her marriage, she was still crying.
The next night she simply refused to go to sleep. Instead, she walked and read and did needlework and drank cup after cup of steaming tea from the Indies. She felt sick with weariness, of course, but such was her fear of what she might dream that she preferred any waking discomfort to whatever sleep might have to offer, and at dawn her mother was pregnant—no, more than pregnant; her mother was having a baby—and as Buttercup stood there in the corner of the room, she watched herself being born and her father gasped at her beauty and so did her mother and the midwife was the first to show concern. The midwife was a sweet woman, known throughout the village for her love of babies, and she said, “Look—trouble—” and the father said, “What trouble? Where before did you ever see such beauty?” and the midwife said, “Don’t you understand why she was given such beauty? It’s because she has no heart, here, listen; the baby is alive but there is no beat” and she held Buttercup’s chest against the father’s ear and the father could only nod and say, “We must find a miracle man to place a heart inside” but the midwife said, “That would be wrong, I think; I’ve heard before of creatures like this, the heartless ones, and as they grow bigger they get more and more beautiful and behind them is nothing but broken bodies and shattered souls, and these without hearts are anguish bringers, and my advice would be, since you’re both still young, to have another child, a different child, and be rid of this one now, but, of course, the final decision is up to you” and the father said to the mother, “Well?” and the mother said, “Since the midwife is the kindest person in the village, she must know a monster when she sees one; let’s get to it,” so Buttercup’s father and Buttercup’s mother put their hands to the baby’s throat and the baby began to gasp. Even when Buttercup was awake again, at dawn, with fifty-seven days to go till her marriage, she could not stop gasping.
From then on, the nightmares became simply too frightening.
When there were fifty days to go, Buttercup knocked, one night, on the door to Prince Humperdinck’s chambers. She entered when he bid her to. “I see trouble,” he said. “You look very ill.” And so she did. Beautiful, of course. Still that. But in no way well.
Buttercup did not see quite how to begin.
He ushered her into a chair. He got her water. She sipped at it, staring dead ahead. He put the glass to one side.
“At your convenience, Princess,” he said.
“It comes to this,” Buttercup began. “In the Fire Swamp, I made the worst mistake in all the world. I love Westley. I always have. It seems I always will. I did not know this when you came to me. Please believe what I am about to say: when you said that I must marry you or face death, I answered, ‘Kill me.’ I meant that. I mean this now too: if you say I must marry you in fifty days, I will be dead by morning.”
The Prince was literally stunned.
After a long moment, he knelt by Buttercup’s chair and, in his gentlest voice, started to speak: “I admit that when we first became engaged, there was to be no love involved. That was as much my choice as yours, though the notion may have come from you. But surely you must have noticed, in this last month of parties and festivities, a certain warming of my attitude.”
“I have. You have been both sweet and noble.”
“Thank you. Having said that, I hope you appreciate how difficult this next sentence is for me to say: I would die myself rather than cause you unhappiness by standing in the way of your marrying the man you love.”
Buttercup wanted almost to weep with gratitude. She said: “I will bless you all my days for your kindness.” Then she stood. “So it’s settled. Our wedding is off.”
He stood too. “Except for perhaps one thing.”
“That being?”
“Have you considered the possibility that he might not now want any longer to marry you?”
Until that moment, she had not.
“You were, I hate to remind you, not altogether gentle with his emotions in the Fire Swamp. Forgive me for saying that, beloved, but you did leave him in the lurch, in a manner of speaking.”
Buttercup sat down hard, her turn now to be stunned.
Humperdinck knelt again beside her. “This Westley of yours, this sailor boy; he has pride?”
Buttercup managed to whisper, “More than any man alive, I sometimes think.”
“Well consider, then, dearest. Here he is, off sailing somewhere with the Dread Pirate Roberts; he has had a month to survive the emotional scars you dealt him. What if he wants now to remain single? Or, worse, what if he has found another?”
Buttercup was now even beyond whispering.
“I think, sweetest child, that we should strike a bargain, you and I: if Westley wants to marry you still, bless you both. If, for reasons unpleasant to mention, his pride will not let him, then you will marry me, as planned, and be the Queen of Florin,”
“He couldn’t be married. I’m sure. Not my Westley.” She looked at the Prince. “But how can I find out?”
“What about this: you write him a letter, telling him everything. We’ll make four copies. I’ll take my four fastest ships and order them off in all directions. The Dread Pirate Roberts is not often more than a month’s sail from Florin. Whichever of my ships finds him will run the white flag of truce, deliver your letter, and Westley can decide. If ‘no,’ he can speak that message to my captain. If ‘yes,’ my captain will sail him here to you, and I will have to content myself somehow with a lesser bride.”
“I think—I’m notsure —but I definitelythink , that this is the most generous decision I have yet heard.”
“Do me this favor then in return: until we know Westley’s intentions, one way or another, let us continue as we have, so the festivities will not be halted. And if I seem too fond of you, remember that I cannot help myself.”
“Agreed,” Buttercup said, going to the door, but not before she kissed his cheek.
He followed her. “Off with you now and write your letter,” and he returned the kiss, smiling with his eyes at her until the corridor curved her from his sight. There was no doubt whatsoever in his mind that he was going to seem too fond of her in the days ahead. Because when she died of murder on their wedding night, it was crucial that all Florin realize the depth of his love, the epochal size of his loss, since then no one would dare hesitate to follow him in the revenge war he was to launch against Guilder.
At first, when he hired the Sicilian, he was convinced it was best that someone else do her in, all the while making it appear the work of soldiers from Guilder. And when the man in black had somehow materialized to spoil his plans, the Prince came close to going insane with rage. But now his basically optimistic nature had reasserted itself: everything always worked out for the best. The people were infatuated with Buttercup now as they had never been before her kidnapping. And when he announced from his castle balcony that she had been murdered—he already saw the scene in his mind: he would arrive just too late to save her from strangling but soon enough to see the Guilderian soldiers leaping from the window of his bedroom to the soft ground below—when he made that speech to the masses on the five hundredth anniversary of his country, well, there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the Square. And although he was just the least bit perturbed, since he had never actually killed a woman before with his bare hands, there was a first time for everything. Besides, if you wanted something done right, you did it yourself.